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Thu, 08 Feb 2018 20:46:20 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4133117499The Keywee Facebook CPC Tracker: January Updatehttps://keywee.co/jan18cpcs/
https://keywee.co/jan18cpcs/#respondWed, 07 Feb 2018 22:31:12 +0000https://keywee.co/?p=2685Recently, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about Facebook CPCs. How will algorithm changes affect them? Have they changed drastically in the past? Are other storytellers seeing the same trends I’m seeing? To help answer these, we decided to launch The Keywee Facebook CPC Tracker: a monthly update on Facebook CPCs based on analysis [...]

]]>Recently, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about Facebook CPCs. How will algorithm changes affect them? Have they changed drastically in the past? Are other storytellers seeing the same trends I’m seeing?

To help answer these, we decided to launch The Keywee Facebook CPC Tracker: a monthly update on Facebook CPCs based on analysis of data from over 500 publishers. We’ll be releasing new data every month, along with relevant insights on content distribution. You can sign up for monthly updates straight to your inbox here.

To kick off the year (and our CPC tracker) right, here is our January 2018 data release.

January Data

January CPCs are down on average by 19% from December, which shouldn’t come as a big surprise. CPCs are generally highest at the end of the quarter, and Q4 is the most expensive quarter of the year. For this reason, there’s always a considerable drop in CPC from the end of one year to the beginning of the next.

The takeaway? This makes January a great time to test and scale a variety of new campaigns, before prices increase again. In February, start to find your top-performers that can carry you through the end of the quarter.

Year over year, average CPC is up 16%. While this may seem like a big change, our data shows that this trend of double-digit year over year increases actually started in Q4 of 2017, making it unlikely to have any connection to Facebook’s latest News Feed algorithm change.

While CPCs in 2017 were relatively stable, we did see a steady year over year increase in pricing in the second half of the year.

What it Means

Unfortunately, publishers have little control over the prices set by Facebook. However, there are a few ways publishers can mitigate pricing changes by focusing on factors they can increase, like click through rate (CTR), audience selection, story selection, and price/volume pressure.

The easiest first step for publishers is to focus on increasing their CTR. We suggest storytellers focus on two key factors of their Facebook campaigns to drive more clicks.

Engaged Audiences

Optimized Creatives

Engaged Audiences

One of the benefits of paying to distribute content is the ability to choose your audience. This allows you to pay just for the audiences you’re most interested in. This can be because of a particular business goal (increase female readership in New York by X%) or just the audiences that are most likely to read your content, and therefore give you the best ROI on your spend.

At Keywee, we specialize in finding the right audiences for every piece of content. Our system scans each piece of content to understand what it’s about, and then matches that against the millions of interests on Facebook and our vast database of historical interaction data to find the users most likely to engage with it.

While you may not be able to do that by yourself, you can also use common sense to get started.

If you want to get to know more about audiences on Facebook, check out the Audience Insights tool, which can tell you more about any group of users.

Optimized Creatives

Another lever you can pull to change CTR is creative strategy. A post creative is what convinces a user to click through to your content. Unsurprisingly, there are a few best practices you can follow to predictably increase your click through.

We’ve written about this pretty extensively in the past, but here are some of our favorite posts:

All Things Creative: An overview on creative best practices across all post components (Post Text, Headline, Image, Description).

Other Benefits

By targeting the audiences most likely to engage with your content with enticing creatives, you’re likely to increase both clicks and other engagement such as likes, comments, and shares. This has the side benefit of boosting your organic reach within Facebook’s new News Feed.

To sign up for future CPC updates, fill out the form below:

About Keywee

At Keywee, we make stories relevant and powerful for the world’s best storytellers — like The New York Times, The BBC, National Geographic, Forbes, and Red Bull.

Today, people aren’t coming to websites to search for content — stories find their audiences in feeds and apps. The upshot? Distribution is now the key for effective storytelling. Keywee’s platform unlocks audience insights using AI and data science, and infuses them into every step of the storytelling process: from topic selection, to story creation, to distribution and optimization. Keywee is backed by leading investors such as Google’s Eric Schmidt and The New York Times, and has been a fast-growing, profitable startup since its inception. To learn more, request a demo here.

]]>https://keywee.co/jan18cpcs/feed/02685Facebook’s News Feed Announcement and What it Means for Publishershttps://keywee.co/facebooks-news-feed-announcement-means-publishers/
https://keywee.co/facebooks-news-feed-announcement-means-publishers/#respondMon, 22 Jan 2018 22:51:58 +0000https://keywee.co/?p=2671Just recently, Facebook announced it was changing its News Feed to “bring people together.” We won’t bury the lede: Here at Keywee, despite our experience helping 500+ publishers distribute their content on Facebook, we don’t know exactly how the announcement will impact organic or paid posts. That said, here are some things we’ve known for [...]

]]>Just recently, Facebook announced it was changing its News Feed to “bring people together.”

We won’t bury the lede: Here at Keywee, despite our experience helping 500+ publishers distribute their content on Facebook, we don’t know exactly how the announcement will impact organic or paid posts. That said, here are some things we’ve known for a while, and hold true more than ever following Facebook’s announcement. In a nutshell? Publishers should not rush to spend on Facebook to “replace” their organic impressions with paid ones. Instead, they should (continue to) use Facebook as an efficient and scalable content distribution platform.

More publishers are spending more on Facebook already – with a purpose

Hopefully it’s not news that many publishers have been investing in paid content distribution on Facebook for years. As Digiday eloquently put it back in June 2017, ”There’s nothing to be ashamed about.” In July, Digiday reported based on Keywee’s data that publishers’ spend on Facebook has more than doubled in the previous 18 months. Our data showed that there was no correlation between organic reach and paid spend. As we said back then, publishers aren’t promoting content to ‘compensate’ for possible loss of organic reach. Our most recent analysis shows these trends continue through the end of 2017 – more publishers are promoting their content on Facebook, and they spend more on average and in total.

Don’t spend, invest

If you are a publisher using Facebook, you should pay for distribution only in the following cases:

Audience development – Invest in audiences that will come back to your site or app on their own. Measure return visits within 30 days and calculate your ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) with a 30 day attribution window.

Same session profitability – Spend when your RPMs (Revenue per thousand impressions) add up to more than the cost of user acquisition.

Digital subscriber acquisition – If you have a paywall in place, or any other form of a subscription model, paid content distribution directed at qualified audiences has a high chance of bringing your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) down.

Will Facebook CPCs go up?

We’ve received this question from quite a few of our clients. The short answer is, again, we don’t know. However, based on Keywee’s data, average CPCs for publishers on Facebook have been stable, despite numerous News Feed change announcements.

Stay informed: If you’re interested in receiving updates about Facebook CPCs going forward, and the potential impact of News Feed changes on CPC, sign up to Keywee’s new CPC tracker, launching soon.

About Keywee

At Keywee, we make stories relevant and powerful for the world’s best storytellers — like The New York Times, The BBC, National Geographic, Forbes, and Red Bull.

Today, people aren’t coming to websites to search for content — stories find their audiences in feeds and apps. The upshot? Distribution is now the key for effective storytelling. Keywee’s platform unlocks audience insights using AI and data science, and infuses them into every step of the storytelling process: from topic selection, to story creation, to distribution and optimization. Keywee is backed by leading investors such as Google’s Eric Schmidt and The New York Times, and has been a fast-growing, profitable startup since its inception. To learn more, request a demo here.

]]>https://keywee.co/facebooks-news-feed-announcement-means-publishers/feed/02671New: The Keywee Facebook CPC Tracker for Storytellershttps://keywee.co/new-the-keywee-facebook-cpc-tracker/
https://keywee.co/new-the-keywee-facebook-cpc-tracker/#respondWed, 17 Jan 2018 00:35:14 +0000https://keywee.co/?p=2649Fill out the form below to receive updates on Facebook CPCs and other content distribution insights. Whenever Facebook announces a change to their platform, we hear the same question: "Will Facebook CPCs increase?" Honestly, the short answer is, we don’t know. However, based on Keywee’s analysis of over 500 publishers and one million articles, average [...]

]]>Fill out the form below to receive updates on Facebook CPCs and other content distribution insights.

Whenever Facebook announces a change to their platform, we hear the same question: “Will Facebook CPCs increase?”

Honestly, the short answer is, we don’t know. However, based on Keywee’s analysis of over 500 publishers and one million articles, average CPCs for publishers on Facebook have been stable in the past two years, despite numerous News Feed change announcements.

Stay informed: If you’re interested in receiving updates about Facebook CPCs going forward, and the potential impact of News Feed changes on CPC, sign up to Keywee’s new CPC tracker, launching soon.

About Keywee
At Keywee, we make stories relevant and powerful for the world’s best storytellers — like The New York Times, The BBC, National Geographic, Forbes, and Red Bull.
Today, people aren’t coming to websites to search for content — stories find their audiences in feeds and apps. The upshot? Distribution is now the key for effective storytelling. Keywee’s platform unlocks audience insights using AI and data science, and infuses them into every step of the storytelling process: from topic selection, to story creation, to distribution and optimization. Keywee is backed by leading investors such as Google’s Eric Schmidt and The New York Times, and has been a fast-growing, profitable startup since its inception. To learn more, request a demo here.

]]>https://keywee.co/new-the-keywee-facebook-cpc-tracker/feed/02649The 2018 Digital Publishing Calendarhttps://keywee.co/2018-digital-publishing-calendar/
https://keywee.co/2018-digital-publishing-calendar/#respondSun, 31 Dec 2017 09:53:09 +0000https://keywee.co/?p=2572We’ve learned a lot from our work with over 400 of the world’s top storytellers (like The New York Times, The BBC, National Geographic, Forbes, and Red Bull). Our partnerships have shown us that in the world of feeds and apps, distribution is the key to effective storytelling. However, the key to effective distribution is [...]

]]>We’ve learned a lot from our work with over 400 of the world’s top storytellers (like The New York Times, The BBC, National Geographic, Forbes, and Red Bull). Our partnerships have shown us that in the world of feeds and apps, distribution is the key to effective storytelling.

However, the key to effective distribution is planning. So to guide you in 2018, we’ve put together a calendar full of holidays, events, and content insights that will provide both creative inspiration and a template for campaign planning. We made sure to cover the important things like the best and worst times to launch campaigns on Facebook and when International Cat Day is.

Each page leaves you room to pencil in your own campaigns, or if you prefer, you can download the calendar as a Google Sheet, Google Calendar, Excel file, or iCal file.

Happy Planning!

Fill out the form below to download the Keywee 2018 Calendar

If you need help building your 2018 content distribution strategy, give us a call.

About Keywee
At Keywee, we make stories relevant and powerful for the world’s best storytellers — like The New York Times, The BBC, National Geographic, Forbes, and Red Bull.
Today, people aren’t coming to websites to search for content — stories find their audiences in feeds and apps. The upshot? Distribution is now the key for effective storytelling. Keywee’s platform unlocks audience insights using AI and data science, and infuses them into every step of the storytelling process: from topic selection, to story creation, to distribution and optimization. Keywee is backed by leading investors such as Google’s Eric Schmidt and The New York Times, and has been a fast-growing, profitable startup since its inception. To learn more, request a demo here.

]]>https://keywee.co/2018-digital-publishing-calendar/feed/02572Think you know Facebook + Publishing? Show us & win an iPhoneXhttps://keywee.co/think-know-facebook-publishing-show-us-win-iphonex/
https://keywee.co/think-know-facebook-publishing-show-us-win-iphonex/#respondTue, 28 Nov 2017 15:46:08 +0000https://keywee.co/?p=2522This holiday season, we wanted a reason to spread the holiday cheer. Because we all love a little competition, we put together The Keywee Facebook Publishing Holiday Challenge. What: This 27-question challenge will test your knowledge of digital publishing, Facebook, creative best practices, and digital advertising. You can compete against other industry mavens for cool [...]

What:

This 27-question challenge will test your knowledge of digital publishing, Facebook, creative best practices, and digital advertising. You can compete against other industry mavens for cool prizes and bragging rights.

How:

Simple. Complete the quiz below, and try to get as many correct answers as you can. The highest scorers will win one of our *grand prizes*.

Prizes!

After the challenge ends, we’ll announce the winners of our grand prizes.

And just by participating, you’ll be entered into a raffle for a $50 Amazon gift card and a free 2018 social strategy consulting session.

That’s it?

No, there’s more! Spread the cheer by sending the challenge to your team members. We’ll celebrate the company with the best overall score by sponsoring a team outing to a Michelin Star restaurant (terms and conditions apply*). The more people fill it in, the higher your cumulative score is and the better your chance to win.

* Like you can’t decide that your team suddenly includes 40 people.

]]>https://keywee.co/think-know-facebook-publishing-show-us-win-iphonex/feed/02522Everyone’s doing it: Paid Distribution for Branded Content [Part 1]https://keywee.co/everyones-paid-distribution-branded-content-part-1/
https://keywee.co/everyones-paid-distribution-branded-content-part-1/#respondTue, 14 Nov 2017 19:07:38 +0000https://keywee.co/?p=2470The branded content market is exploding. Some estimates peg the market size for branded content at $20 billion over the next five years. When a brand partners with a publisher for a branded content campaign, the brand is buying a few things: the publisher's storytelling expertise, its influence and thought leadership, and access to an [...]

]]>The branded content market is exploding. Some estimates peg the market size for branded content at $20 billion over the next five years.

When a brand partners with a publisher for a branded content campaign, the brand is buying a few things: the publisher’s storytelling expertise, its influence and thought leadership, and access to an engaged, relevant audience.

Unfortunately, getting this audience to interact with branded content articles is becoming increasingly hard. Organic traffic isn’t what it used to be, and branded content specifically doesn’t get much SEO love.

To combat this trend, it’s common for publishers to acquire audiences when there is a positive ROI. For editorial content, this means buying traffic for profitable audience development and subscriptions. For Branded Content, it means buying traffic as part of a bundled offering that may include acquisition as part of the cost, or may break it out as a separate line item.

Paid branded content distribution has more than doubled year over year.

In the past year, we’ve seen growth in paid distribution overall, with publishers doubling their spend on Facebook in the past 18 months. Paid branded content distribution has been growing faster than paid editorial distribution – it has more than doubled year over year (113% growth), and its share of total publisher spend on Facebook grew from 0.8% in Q3’16 to 9.5% in Q3’17 – as presented in the chart below. These figures are based on Keywee’s analysis of data from over 400 publishers and one million articles promoted on Facebook.

Stay tuned for our next post in this series – a playbook for publishers for reaching the best audience for branded content articles using paid distribution.

PS (shameless plug) – Keywee helps over 400+ content creators distribute their content efficiently on Facebook – both editorial and branded content. If you’d like to see whether Keywee can help your team, feel free to request a demo.

About Keywee
At Keywee, we make stories relevant and powerful for the world’s best storytellers — like The New York Times, The BBC, National Geographic, Forbes, and Red Bull.
Today, people aren’t coming to websites to search for content — stories find their audiences in feeds and apps. The upshot? Distribution is now the key for effective storytelling. Keywee’s platform unlocks audience insights using AI and data science, and infuses them into every step of the storytelling process: from topic selection, to story creation, to distribution and optimization. Keywee is backed by leading investors such as Google’s Eric Schmidt and The New York Times, and has been a fast-growing, profitable startup since its inception. To learn more, request a demo here.

]]>https://keywee.co/everyones-paid-distribution-branded-content-part-1/feed/02470The Definitive Guide To Profitable Videohttps://keywee.co/definitive-guide-profitable-video/
https://keywee.co/definitive-guide-profitable-video/#respondMon, 13 Nov 2017 19:35:00 +0000https://keywee.co/?p=2478The “pivot to video” is the talk of content creators everywhere, but there’s still one big question on everyone’s mind: monetization. While native video is a unique offering, social media audiences also present a distinct opportunity to build an on-site video business. To discuss how publishers can take advantage of this opportunity, we hosted a [...]

]]>The “pivot to video” is the talk of content creators everywhere, but there’s still one big question on everyone’s mind: monetization. While native video is a unique offering, social media audiences also present a distinct opportunity to build an on-site video business.

To discuss how publishers can take advantage of this opportunity, we hosted a webinar with our friends from JW Player and Facebook. We walked through the steps any publisher can take to drive profitable audiences to their onsite video using Keywee, JW Player, and Facebook. Read on for a recap, or download the full webinar for all the details.

1. Build the right infrastructure

The first step of course, is to make sure you have the tools to monetize video on your website. The key here is a video player that allows for flexible monetization options without slowing down load times.

A player like JW Player can ensure smooth streaming while also integrating with a variety of ad servers, networks, and exchanges to help you maximize revenue. They also provide tools that help guide viewers to the videos that will interest them most, leading to additional video views.

2. Find the right audiences

Once your site is ready, you’ll need to drive an audience to your videos. Today, that means leveraging paid distribution channels, most notably Facebook. Of course, not all audiences are created equal; The more engaged the audience, the more likely they’ll watch a video (or two or three) and the more revenue you’ll make. To maximize profitability, you’ll need to find the audiences most likely to engage with your content for the lowest price. Luckily, Facebook is not only the number one content consumption platform, it also has great targeting tools that allow you to do just that.

One tool that we suggest is interest targeting. This feature allows you to target users who have exhibited specific interests based on their web activity. This is one of the most intuitive targeting options. Have a video about rescue dogs? Target the interests “Dogs,” “Animal Rescue,” and “Animal Shelter.” Unsurprisingly, those audiences are likely to react well to rescue dog content.

Keywee can help you uncover some of the less expected interests that will also respond well to your videos. Because they are less obvious interests, they are often less demanded, and therefore available at a lower price. For our rescue dog example, “Nintendo DS Lite,” “Soccer,” and “Parenting” were other winning interests.

Another targeting tool that we highly suggest is Facebook’s Website Custom Audiences (WCA). Once you have a Facebook pixel installed on your site, you can target groups of users on Facebook who have taken specific actions on your website. You can choose people that have visited a certain page or a certain section of the site, or you can create custom events and target even more specific audiences like users who have watched more than 2 videos or users who have watched more than 3 minutes of a video. Users who have already engaged with video on your site are likely to continue to do so, making these audiences very valuable.

However, Website Custom Audiences can be limiting. Because you are only targeting people who have already been on your site, the audiences don’t bring in any new users, and are often small. Facebook has another powerful tool called Lookalike Audiences to help combat this.

This tool finds users on Facebook who are similar to a group that you select. You can use a Page’s followers, a WCA, or any conversion event to build a lookalike audience. That means that you can build an audience that looks like the users who have already engaged with your video. Depending on your goals, you can choose the size of the audience – from 1% of the population of the location that you’re targeting, to 10%. While 10% will give you the largest audience, they will be less similar to your original audience, likely meaning lower engagement.

3. Package your content

Finding the audience to target is only the beginning. You still need to catch their attention in the Facebook News Feed. The flexibility of Facebook means that you can use different creatives for different audiences, so try to use creatives that appeal to each audience. Imagery can be an important factor, but we’ve seen post texts and headlines make an impact as well. The important thing is to constantly be testing and optimizing around what works best.

You can also influence on site behavior with your creative packaging. By mentioning a video or using the word “watch” in your creative, you can set the right expectations for the user and increase onsite click-to-play. (Note: Do not put a play button on your image to indicate that the link is a video. Facebook considers this to be misleading and will downgrade your post.)

4. Optimize your spend

The key to a profitable operation is optimization. You need to understand the exact value of one video play so that you know how much you’re willing to spend on it. Once you have that number, you can center all of your activities around it. Rather than optimizing user acquisition on a Cost-Per-Click (CPC), you can start thinking about your Cost-Per-Video-View (CPV). By increasing your click to play rate and your number of video views per session, you can dramatically increase your profit margin.

To watch the full webinar (including an example of step-by-step profit optimization), fill out the form below.

About Keywee
At Keywee, we make stories relevant and powerful for the world’s best storytellers — like The New York Times, The BBC, National Geographic, Forbes, and Red Bull.
Today, people aren’t coming to websites to search for content — stories find their audiences in feeds and apps. The upshot? Distribution is now the key for effective storytelling. Keywee’s platform unlocks audience insights using AI and data science, and infuses them into every step of the storytelling process: from topic selection, to story creation, to distribution and optimization. Keywee is backed by leading investors such as Google’s Eric Schmidt and The New York Times, and has been a fast-growing, profitable startup since its inception. To learn more, request a demo here.

]]>https://keywee.co/definitive-guide-profitable-video/feed/02478How Publishers Win on Facebook in Q4: Data-driven Insightshttps://keywee.co/publishers-win-facebook-q4-data-driven-insights/
https://keywee.co/publishers-win-facebook-q4-data-driven-insights/#respondThu, 19 Oct 2017 14:37:19 +0000https://keywee.co/?p=2429It’s no secret that the world of content is changing rapidly. Today, no one uses a homepage to find their news - stories find readers in feeds and apps. And for those of us in the business of storytelling, that means paid distribution is key. But utilizing those feeds and apps can be a challenge, [...]

]]>It’s no secret that the world of content is changing rapidly. Today, no one uses a homepage to find their news – stories find readers in feeds and apps. And for those of us in the business of storytelling, that means paid distribution is key.

But utilizing those feeds and apps can be a challenge, particularly in times of fierce competition like Q4. Every year, the last few months of the year present the most crowded content distribution landscape, and with it, the highest prices.

Getting your content noticed during this time can be difficult, especially given a limited budget. To help your efforts this year, we put together a lookbook of top-performing Facebook posts from Q4 of last year. It includes popular holiday season subjects and examples of top-performing posts, as well as strategies that you can apply to your own posts, based on analysis of over 1 million posts from over 400 publishers, including The New York Times, Well + Good, Slate, and CNN.

You can download the full lookbook below, and here are four key tips to get you started:

1. Make a plan

This may sound trivial, but planning is one of the most important strategies for Q4. Because prices can fluctuate so much throughout the quarter (and not just in the usual ways), you should have a good idea when you’re going to spend. Unless you’re making great returns on ad revenue or purchases, you’ll likely want to scale back on the most expensive days of the year (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc.) and save that budget for other days.

It’s also a good idea to test your evergreen content before the price surge, and create a content calendar with only the best-performing pieces.

2. Stand out from the crowd

One of the major challenges of the holiday season is that everyone is writing about the same topics. News Feeds are filled to the brim with stuffing recipes, gift guides, and travel advice. With those competitive topics, it’s important to stand out from the crowd by sharing something with your unique brand spin, like this crafting focused gift guide.

When it makes sense, try posting stories before the rush. The further into the holiday season, the more cookie recipes everyone will have already seen. This example, posted in mid-October, adds a reason to post early: “Freeze-Ahead” cookies means it’s never too early to start preparing for Christmas.

3. Target less competitive audiences

Because many publications are writing about the same things, they also want to target the same people, making classic audiences like “Cooking,” “Travel,” and “Holiday Gifts” expensive.

Our tip? Target other related interests that are more niche and less competitive. Sometimes, you’ll need to combine a few smaller niche audiences to achieve the same scale. (Need help with that? Just reach out.)

And don’t be afraid to try something a bit different. For example, for this “How to Soften Cold Butter Quickly Without Melting It” story, Keywee’s Audience builder suggests targeting some expected audiences, like Butter, Kitchen, and Baking, but also suggests other audiences that will be less competitive like Paula Deen, Cream, French Cuisine, and Microwave.

4. Use post best practices

As always, use post best practices to boost engagement. The lookbook is chock-full of examples of top performing post texts, headlines, and images. For example, using the phrase “Here are X things” in the post text boosts click-through rate by 19% on average.

]]>https://keywee.co/publishers-win-facebook-q4-data-driven-insights/feed/02429Recommended Podcasts for Digital Publishing and Media Listenershttps://keywee.co/recommended-podcasts-digital-publishing-media-listeners/
https://keywee.co/recommended-podcasts-digital-publishing-media-listeners/#respondThu, 12 Oct 2017 21:01:25 +0000https://keywee.co/?p=2411We love to read at Keywee, and we also love to listen. Our team has been on a podcast tear recently, and we recently shared a few of our publishing and digital media-related podcasts in our Friday Reader email. We got a lot of recommendations for other podcasts we should check out, so we compiled a big list [...]

]]>We love to read at Keywee, and we also love to listen. Our team has been on a podcast tear recently, and we recently shared a few of our publishing and digital media-related podcasts in our Friday Reader email. We got a lot of recommendations for other podcasts we should check out, so we compiled a big list for all digital media + audio fans out there.

Digiday – Our favorite news source, with a great podcast. This recent episode, “Advertising is still a great business model for news,” is with Quartz’s president and editor in chief, Kevin Delaney.

]]>https://keywee.co/recommended-podcasts-digital-publishing-media-listeners/feed/02411Career Advice from The NYT and Bloomberg Proshttps://keywee.co/career-advice-nyt-bloomberg-pros/
https://keywee.co/career-advice-nyt-bloomberg-pros/#respondMon, 18 Sep 2017 13:39:13 +0000https://keywee.co/?p=2293As part of Keywee's efforts to be a helpful, educational partner for the NYC publishing and digital media community, we were fortunate to host Bryan Davis from The New York Times and Shannon Doubleday from Bloomberg Media for a candid discussion about careers in digital publishing and audience development. We talked about their career paths, [...]

]]>As part of Keywee’s efforts to be a helpful, educational partner for the NYC publishing and digital media community, we were fortunate to host Bryan Davis from The New York Times and Shannon Doubleday from Bloomberg Media for a candid discussion about careers in digital publishing and audience development. We talked about their career paths, advice for others in the space, and the skills they look for when hiring for their teams.

Below are a few insights from the event, and here’s a short video with some of the highlights:

This job you hate… might just be a valuable stepping stone

Bryan started off with a pointed question: “Who here has ever worked at a job they hated?” Many people raised their hands, including both our panelists.

Bryan shared that although he may have hated some of his past jobs at the time, each one of them, from mowing lawns, to DJing, to working in a pizza kitchen, had helped him get to where he is today. Shannon agreed, sharing how her experience as a writer and her time abroad make her better at her job today.

This philosophy feeds into their hiring practices. When hiring for their teams, Bryan and Shannon both consider diversity of experience and interests. In addition to having varied work backgrounds (Bryan works with a rocket scientist), the most interesting candidates have an outside “passion about interesting, weird hobbies [and it] allows them to step away” and present creative solutions to problems they face at work.

Don’t stop learning

Bryan and Shannon both touched on the importance of self-learning subjects that interest them beyond their day-to-day responsibilities. Great teammates are constantly eager to acquire new knowledge, and not necessarily just through academia.

Shannon explained how she “can code a little [and that it helps her] speak to those who create the product” more efficiently. Bryan is learning Python for similar reasons. Developing skills that seem outside of your job description can accelerate your career (and personal) growth.

“The job you’re going to have in five years doesn’t exist yet.”

We discussed what it takes to thrive in a career in the media world. Bryan elaborated on his five-year plan, or lack thereof. In his words, “the job you’re going to have in five years doesn’t exist yet.” His advice is to focus on skills and interests you want to develop rather than the exact position you want in five years.

Shannon agreed, noting that the rate of change of technology means there may be some skills in the media world that will be foreign concepts to her in 20 years, the way some aspects of her job are to her parents today. The two panelists concluded that the skills that make someone an early-adapter are transferable to any role, and even any industry.